Finding+demand+and+supply

Floyd Myung, floydwon@gmail.com || ||
 * || =Finding Demand and Supply=

Overview
This game is an enhanced version of Monopoly. By randomly produced economic effect from nature, economic situation, players should respond to keep the benefits of global supply chain for its own company. The ultimate goal of this game is that player as a CEO will keep his company in line of benefits by chaining the company’s manufacturing system, keeping a good flow of supplying items to markets, targeting other markets in other countries. Help system will deliver knowledge map for technology and its use to develop what the player wants to create. Again, it is a version of monopoly and SidMeier’s Civilization.

Instructional Objective
From this game, the learners will acquire the importance of global chain for his company. Like Albertson or Ralph’s which has branches worldwide, this game will give the insight of how to get profits by globally chaining the resources and the goods in all over the places. And the learner will be able to understand the importance of trade, knowledge of trade, knowledge of other countries’ market trend. In total, the learner will acquire the importance of Localization.

Learners
Those who are in 7th to 9th grades are the target audiences to this game. I can say that this game can be used in higher education area. Since, it will give most of the information based on the difficulties that the player will setup before starting this game, this game is very potent to be utilized to a curriculum for over 6th graders. The instructor should help for the player to learn for economics terminologies at some points.

Context of Use
Since this game covers many types of the audiences, it should be run in online. However, like Second Life, it can be used as a case study by presenting the instructor’s case in the game. Given a recording option for the player’s playing time, it will give a good case to use in a classroom. We recommend that this game should be played based on the knowledge and skill that are gained by the classroom so that players do not have any difficulties to find what is going on in his game. Also, there must be difficulties to understand any economics knowledge. So we strongly recommend that the instructor should give a showcase for the players to understand economics knowledge that are deployed during the game. The game will be designed with economics SME’s advices and strategies that can be used in the game(not the structure of the game, but the strategy that the player will refer). Also, since the game is online based, we expect that the game can be played by multiple users, competing each other to get the dominance on the market. The game will be developed by Flash which provide flexibility to develop online game and PHP which will work as a media to deliver variables which affect many situations during playing the game.

Scope
This game will be played in a map which presents the world. It will take a time based on how the player responds to the situation that is going on in the game. It takes turns. The content only focuses on management of a company. The player can change the business area(from a plumbing company to IT technology company). Only circumstances based on political and local issues(such as laws or war in iraq) cannot be changed and will be controlled by the “Circumstance creation engine” which is consisted by decision making algorithm to create a situation to affect the game. Since this game is a storytelling based strategy game, it has five big branches(Asia, America, Europe, Australia, Africa). The main strategy is to get resources and sell them to markets in these five continents. How big will this game be? About how much time will it take to play? What content is specifically included? Excluded? For an adventure game, tell how many "rooms" and objects there will be. For a quiz game, how many questions and categories. For a branching story, how many screens and how many main branches.

Object of the Game
The goal of this game is to gain “Monopoly”. However, when the player achieves monopoly, he/she should have a taste of bitterness since monopoly is the ultimate goal of any of real company, the result is not good to the market. If the game is played by multiple users, the goal of the game will be that the player will make all the other players be bankrupt. What's the game goal? What's the end state that players are striving for (e.g., to be the first to reach the Finish square, or to be the first to reach 100 points.)

Design Details
This is the heart of the document. It will serve as a blueprint for those who actually develop the game. The more specific you can be here, the less backtracking and expensive confusion there will be later.

Universal Elements
Though the contents that this game is delivering is very heavy (economics.. as you know..), the environment that the game will give should be user friendly. Therfore, Cartoonish style is the best fit to this game. Animated technology, animated player avartar and animated component will motive the learners to keep playing in this game.

Specific Elements
Since the game is strategy game, it must have assets of braching scenarios and simulations. The controller for the player 1. The player can control “investing, retreating, hiring, researching, establishing”. 1.1 investing. When the player researches the trend of a market and local issues, he/she decides to invest. This control gives the right to invest. 1.2 retreating When the player get newsletter from anonymous or media about local issues where he invested, he/she retreat his company. This control gives the right to retreat. 1.3 hiring When the player invested in a place, he/she must hire employees to run his company. Also, before researching an area, he must hire someone who knows the culture and trend in that area to conduct researches. This control gives him the right to hire any type of employee. 1.4 researching When the player wants to invest any place, he/she can invests immediately. However, having a local respondents and researching the market in the place will give more information to him. This control gives the right to research an area. 1.5 establishing When he decides to invest, he or she must have a branch office or branch company in the place he/she tries to invest. This control will let the player be able to setup a branch office or company in the place. 2. Outputs 2.1 From the system(game engine) Message box: information of local place and market, local issues such as riots and war or the situation of economy in the local place. Newsletter: information about trends and technology, market place issues and economic situation in a specific area which will give a good information for invest. 2.2 From the player Annual report: the profits and losses on the entire company the player has setup. Monthly report : The profits and losses on the entire company.

2.3 From the components ( i.e : local researchers, employees) Message Box: any information that needs the player’s immediate response. Message Box: any change of circumstances ( such as a message box : “our employees in Asia think that your decision on xxx issue is not appropriate to their worklife security. – 2/3 of employees quit the job…”) 3. Initial environment $100,000, a company which was setup before the game starts by the selection ( i.e – choose your area of business : tire industry, car parts, diamond.. and so on..) 4. Concept of this game Refer to Figure 1.

Technical Elements
Describe the: • specific software needed to author the game • platform(s) the game would be developed for • screen size and resolution of the game • bit depth and dimensions of graphics and sounds • file formats of graphics and sounds • method to accommodate multiple platforms (if that's being done) • naming convention used to name all files • data structures for any files used to save the game state

[Figure 1] Concept of This game

Competing Products
This game is based on SidMeier’s Civilization series and Monopoly. I can say that this is a version of Civilization which concerns “Demand and Supply chain in global perspective” Civilization gave me the idea of knowledge map on technology and I converted this knowledge map to be able to present economic theories and terminologies so that many students can learn demand and supply chain in economics by extending the area to be global.

Motivational Issues
In my experience, learning economics in high school was very dull and not motivating at all. Since most of the economics theories are mathematics, I wonder how many future social scientists will cover this mathematics issue in economics. However, the basic idea of economics is just plain and easy to explain by showing the cases in real world. Let the student do not care about mathematics and make them feel free to understand economics in his own experience and simulations. My specific reference for the idea of this game is Cognitive Load theory. From this point, I found that storytelling method is the best-fit content to the learner. And making their scenario and cases will be better than using the cases that were from other’s experience. Since it is based on a commercial game, Civilization, I expect to have enough motivation to engage this game. It must have the same level of challenge, control and curiosity( I am not sure about fantasy on this game since the game should be realistic.). Describe how the game engages the learner. How does it make use of curiosity, challenge, control, fantasy, competition, cooperation, etc.? (No one game will do all of these things, so focus on the particular strengths of this particular game.) Make specific reference to the theoretical readings associated with this course.

Design Process
Describe the process you went through in putting the game together. What were your first thoughts? How did you enhance your ideas? What ideas did you consider and reject (and why?). How did you gather background information? What did you do to see if there are similar games out there? What did you do to get feedback on the idea? How did you flesh out the game to the point of having a playable prototype? How did you gather feedback from that? What lessons did you learn from this that you'll carry to your next game design project?